Streams of Consciousness

Today's Upper Room Thought for the Day is: Seek God's kingdom first and last. I am cognizant of the kingdom of worldly treasures that I am erecting. As this kingdom grows, it is harder for me to see God's kingdom, and my worldly treasures become roadblocks between God and I. Upon reflection, the disparity between my wealth and those less fortunate is striking. One of the examples in today's meditation was about coats. There are people without coats, yet I have 4 or 5, most of them seldom worn. The multiple coats are part of my worldly kingdom. I own them. I possess them. Yet, I understand that this type of wealth is transient. It could disappear at any time, and most definitely will disapper when I die. Building a kingdom with God's treasures is more lasting. I can take it with me into eternity. It is hard to give up worldly treasure. At the same time, when done with an open and loving heart, giving is one of the best feelings in the world, and a clear

It can be said, as my Spreadsheet Modeling and Decision Analysis text says, that there are two essential elements of a statistical relationship: 1) A tendency for the dependent variable Y to vary with the independent variable(s) in a systematic way. This systematic variation can be mathematically established as a function, f(x1, x2....xk), where x are the independent variables. 2) An element of unsystematic or random variation in the dependent variable, irrespective of the independent variable. This 'error' term should always be taken into account along with the systematic variation. Obviously, the desire is to achieve an error term as low as possible. It can also be said, as the Elementary Concepts of Statistics that I pulled off of the web says, that "Statistics does nothing else but help us evaluate relations between variables. Actually, all of the hundreds of statistical procedures that exist can be interpreted in terms of evaluating various kinds of inter

There was an editorial in the WSJ today, written by a professor from NYU. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. He wrote about John Kerry, and asserted that Kerry's conclusions about Vietnam, and his opinions about Iraq are a misread of history and lead to inaccurate strategies. The article provoked me to think about the justification for invading another country. I found myself thinking that war and invasion can be justified by the suppression of moral liberties in other countries. However, I think that such action should be endorsed by a world-wide organization, such as the UN. To my knowledge, the UN did not back our Vietnam invasion, and it certainly did not back the Iraq war, which we nonetheless pursued on a unilateral basis. I don't disagree so much with the fact that we went to war, or that we need to stay there, but I do strongly disagree with the way in which we waged war. If the situation in Iraq, or elsewhere, truly and morally warrents milia